One of many voices that speak out against problems of the portrayal of gender, sexuality and race in comics. I just happen to be a male, white middle class member of the primary comic book target demographic.

Archive for May, 2007

I’m going to be short, sweet and blunt. Dirk Deppy called out a request.

…fangirls want female-friendly superhero comics, they’re going to have to prove that this time an audience is ready and willing to buy them, and to do that, one is basically going to have to be built from scratch.

Spiderman 1, Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3. I believe money talks, and that money says the world is ready for Spiderman. There’s your female fan base Dirk, right there in the cinema audience. Now pony the reason why they shouldn’t be given a quality product that meets their needs since they like the character, and paid the admission price to see the show.(more…)

Since I’ve recently encountered another round of “But men are depicted with washboard abs, so comics are sexist against men, so shut up about comics being sexist” commentary on the internets, I’m going to take a position. There is a line in the sand, and I have walked right over it, and planted the DS flag on the side of wrong. Firmly on the side of wrong.

Introducing… Empowerful Lad. Raised on a diet of mainstream superhero comics and superconditioning hair products, he acquired the power of flight! the strength of strong things! and an unexpectedly flat crotch! He is…

have badly distorted figures with spinal injuries in duct tape inside the covers?

look at the hairstyles to figure out which female character is which?

see female characters killed to provide incentives for male characters? Why can’t the guys get on with the job without the women being killed as a pep talk motivator?

have a bland, colourless and ultimately personality void superheroine with an ever expanding chest line presented to me as my preference for strong female characters?

read stories where the writer couldn’t figure out anything new to do with a backstory, so he had the character raped?

have soft core porn in place of hard core superheroics?

stop people who want to share the love of action, adventure and heroism from being part of the gang just because they have a vagina instead of a penis?

try to stomp on people who are suggesting that these comics could be better drawn, better written, more entertaining and less problematic?

put up with this shit? Seriously WHY DO I HAVE TO PUT UP WITH CRAP IN A MEDIUM ALLEGEDLY MADE FOR ME? If it’s my medium, then I demand immediate changes. I’m male, damn it, comics are made for me. So, comics, make me a comic that meets my needs of being able to be shared with the other 50% of the population. That’s an order.

Comics are for boys. I’m a boy. I say we clean this show up and make comics for girls and boys.

Guys, imagine a world where men and women both read comics. Openly, freely, and you could talk to girls about comics, and comic book heroes and superheroics and they’d understand you.

A world where guys and girls who like comics could share that love of comics together.

If you really like comics, wouldn’t that be a world worth fighting for?

Look, anyone who tries to tell me that I need a vagina to read a romance novel is clearly misusing their equipment (book and body part). If you try to tell me that comic books require penises to be read, I’m going to ask you to leave, and I won’t want to know what you’re doing with the print media and your body parts. So basically, quit trying to tell me that I need a gender to get into a genre. This ain’t world of warcraft people, you can equip genres of any type, in any class.

Johanna, you are one of the gang. It’s just that your gang is trying to horde a genre away from a group of people who are practically trying to beat the door down to get access to give these industries their money.

In the industry I come from, when we’ve got a market that keen to participate, it’s seen as a gift from the market segmentation gods. For the sake of improving a few standards that make the superhero genre relevant to the 2007 (like racial diversity, like gender equality, like remembering that the porn industry is a separate business, and like hiring artists who can draw) the industry could expand beyond the currently shrinking market share.
For the sake of defending an industry with declining sales figures that is hell bent on thwarting willing markets from participating, you want to describe someone as “unusual or non-standard or atypical”. Both of your posts seem to take a pride in fending off would be new market participants in an industry that could use a sales boost.
In paraphrased words of Jon Stewart… Why do you hate the comic book industry?

22% of romance readers are male — a significant increase from the 2002 survey that showed only 7% of readers were male.

See, rather than giggling at those aberrant males who read romance, the romance industry treated them as a viable financial growth opportunity. They were seen as a market. A market to be grown, nurtured and respected.